Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to support the Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals Code Amendment Bill 2010. This bill makes commonsense amendments to the labelling laws relating to labels on agricultural chemicals which have already been approved for use. In summary, if there are to be minor changes made to labels which do not affect the principal composition of the chemicals and which are essentially superficial changes to the product or the packaging and labelling itself, then the process will be streamlined. The changes are also made in conjunction with changes relating to the labelling laws administered by Food Standards Australia New Zealand and for which complementary legislation is necessary. These are the subject of a separate bill in this House which I will be speaking on later.

What I will focus my remarks on, however, is the use of chemicals in food production because that is what I believe the real debate should be about. Over time we have seen the increased use of chemicals in food production in order to eliminate pests and to increase production. As with the use of all chemicals, there are always unintended consequences, in particular health consequences, for both the farmers using the chemicals and the consumers using the end product, as well as contamination of the environment, as these chemicals are inevitably washed into the soil, into waterways and into the ocean.

The consequences of course are minimised by the research and approval processes in place, but the long-term effects are never fully known until many years later, and the safety is never 100 per cent guaranteed. Often it is only years after the product has been in use that the effects are clear and the chemicals used are then banned. In the interim the negative health effects are significant.

Just as concerning is the fact that food is increasingly being imported from countries overseas where there is little or no guarantee that those same chemicals are not still being used in food production. If they have been banned, one can never be sure that in countries which do not have effective compliance regimes the bans are being enforced. In fact, I am not absolutely certain that we have the systems in place in Australia to ensure that bans on products are enforced in this country as well.

I know this is a matter which greatly concerns many of the people I speak with. Food health risks and the consequences of the increased use of chemicals in the production of food are unquantifiable but nevertheless very real. The nature of medical conditions that have become commonplace throughout society but which were previously rare has changed markedly in recent years. Only this morning it was interesting to read in one of our daily newspapers about the rising level of cancer throughout the community. Again, I do not know what to attribute the rising level of cancer to, but I suspect that our food could be one of the sources.

The cause of these changes is difficult to establish. However, I have little doubt that our food sources are contributing to the health conditions of the nation and, in turn, the cost to the nation in responding to those health conditions. Not surprisingly, the provision of information on specific ingredients in foods is now a critical consideration of our food labelling laws. I note that our food labelling laws are themselves the subject of an extensive national review, with Dr Neal Blewett, a former member of this place and a former health minister of this country, heading the review panel. I can assure the House that in my own electorate the review of the food labelling laws with respect to not only the composition of the food in terms of its natural ingredients but also the chemicals that are being used in those foods and used to produce the food sources that goes into those foods is something that is frequently raised with me.

The use of chemicals in food production is likely to escalate into the future. In Australia most of our fertile agricultural land along Australia’s coastline is being used up for housing, pushing food production to less fertile areas. I have certainly seen that in my own home city of Adelaide. It was not that long ago that most of the fruit and vegetables were grown in and around the Adelaide CBD area, because that is where the most fertile land was. That land has now been almost entirely consumed by housing development. Not surprisingly, food production is slowly being pushed further out to country and regional areas, where it does of course provide an industry sector for those country and regional communities. Nevertheless, what it has done is push the production of fruit and vegetables out to areas where the soil is nowhere near as fertile as it was in the Adelaide Plains. Growing food on less fertile land requires increased use of chemicals. It is as simple as that. As more chemicals are used, they not only get into our foods but are washed into the land, into the waterways and into our coastal waters, causing very serious consequences.

A key goal of the development of extensive wetlands in northern Adelaide was in fact to prevent contaminated water from entering the adjacent coastal waters which were the home to Adelaide’s major fish-breeding grounds. I am also aware that this has been of real concern with respect to management of the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland, and I will talk about that in just a moment. But with respect to the fish breeding grounds off Adelaide in the Gulf of St Vincent, as a result of contamination of those waters we were seeing a reduction in the level of fish that were breeding. The development of the wetlands by the northern councils in Adelaide was done for a number of reasons, but one of the key reasons was to ensure that those contaminated waters were not entering into the Gulf of St Vincent, destroying the fish-breeding grounds, the sea grasses and the mangroves along the coast. As a result of the action taken, what we have seen in recent years is a reversal of those trends. The sea grasses are now regenerating, the mangroves have regenerating and so are the fish stocks. The fishing industry to South Australia is very, very important, and I can very well recall being lobbied by the fishing industry in South Australia to ensure that we tried to do whatever we could to preserve the fish-breeding grounds in the Gulf of St Vincent. I am pleased to be able to say that we are in fact doing just that.

to 60 kilometres inside the World Heritage area. As a member of the House Standing Committee on Climate Change, Water, Environment and the Arts I also recall visiting the Great Barrier Reef and being briefed about the use of chemicals in that region, and being advised of the concerns being expressed about the washing of chemicals out into the coastline adjacent to the reef. Having said that, I have to say that we were also briefed about some of the terrific work that is being done by local communities there to ensure that that does not continue to happen, and I have to compliment many of the local communities for what they are doing.

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